THE
MISSING DIMENSION IN SEX
by Herbert W. Armstrong
CHAPTER 1 ..... World in Revolt -- Why This Book Had to Be Written
CHAPTER 2 ..... Why -- and
What Is the Missing Dimension?
CHAPTER 3 ..... How Shame
Entered
CHAPTER 4 ..... Why Sex? Its
TRUE MEANING
CHAPTER 5 ..... The Divine
Purposes of Sex
CHAPTER 6 ..... But Was Sex
Really Necessary?
CHAPTER 7 ..... Recapturing
the True Values of Sex -- the Commanded Functions
CHAPTER 8 ..... The
Biological Differences
CHAPTER 9 ..... How God
Designed Sex
CHAPTER 10
...."Fearfully and Wonderfully Made"
CHAPTER 11 .... The
God-Ordained Uses of Sex
CHAPTER 12 .... Dating --
and Teenage Morality
CHAPTER 13 .... The Best
Age for Marriage
CHAPTER 14 .... Planned
Parenthood, Contraceptives and Sexual Dysfunctions
CHAPTER 15 ....
Engagement -- and Wedding Night
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Read This First
If EVER the Western world needed a book, it needs this one now! In no area of
human life has there been such drastic social change as in that of SEX. The
so-called "New Morality," first unleashed by World War I, intensified
by World War II, completely KO'd Western civilization during the decades of the
fifties, sixties and seventies. Prior to the first World War, it was illegal in
the United States to publish, sell or distribute a book of instruction on the
subject of sex. After World War I an avalanche of books, pamphlets, magazine and
newspaper articles, teachings on sex, descended on the public. Yet in all this,
the most vitally needed dimension of knowledge was missing. During the fifties,
sixties, seventies and into the eighties, sex has been hurled at the public in
every manner -- in movies, in television, in all advertising, in TV commercials.
Everywhere sex came to be freely talked about. Morals relaxed. The "New
Morality" became accepted by society. Divorces escalated. Family and home
life became almost nonexistent -- yet a solid family structure is the very
foundation of a stable and enduring society. There has floated abroad the
delusion that whatever is new and different is "more progressive" and
"modern," and therefore better. Far more often it is retrogression!
The purposes and true meaning of both sex and marriage are extremely vital to
know. Physical details can be rightly understood only in the light of what has
gone before in this volume. This astonishing knowledge especially as presented
in the earlier and middle chapters of this book -- is as vital as it is
surprising. It is important to read this book in its rightful order, beginning
with Chapter 1. Regardless of how much knowledge the reader may have acquired on
the subject, he will find much that is new to him in this book -- and he will
come to see this entire subject in an entirely new light. The impetus which
started research and gathering of material for this book, in 1949, was the need
to produce our own textbook for the Principles of Living course in Ambassador
College. However, the accelerating demand from the constantly enlarging
readership of "The Plain Truth", now nearly three million subscribers
in all parts of the world, necessitated preparation of a work for the
instruction of this vast number of people, in all walks of life, and in all
levels of education. Purposely, therefore, we have avoided the staid, dry,
pedantic, professorial language of scholarship which seems typical of the
average university-level textbook. Such writing may inflate the intellectual
vanity of the author. But it is our purpose to convey knowledge to the reader.
The purpose of words is to convey meaning. We have tried to make this text as
plain and understandable as it is frank. We have endeavored to make it easy to
read. This work has been produced out of genuine concern and deep compassion for
a humanity robbed by false teachings, as well as by ignorance, of the joys, the
delights and the rich blessings which have been made possible. But these may be
OURS today, if only we will open our minds to receive what has been missing
until now. Read and reread it, from beginning to end, with a clean heart, a
right spirit and an understanding mind! -- and you will be richly rewarded.
Introduction
Sex in the Eighties -- Where Have Six Decades Brought Us?
THE WORLD HAS EMERGED FROM the age of hush! A moral revolution has swept the
world! Few under thirty have any conception of what the previous 4,000-year-long
world was like. Few over thirty are aware of the extent to which the "New
Morality" has progressed -- in reverse! Little was known about sex. The
subject was never discussed. It was unlawful in the United States to publish,
sell or distribute any knowledge about sex or teaching in its use. Certainly
young married people sorely needed proper information. After World War I the
legal dam was removed. The floodgates against published sex information opened.
An avalanche of books, magazine and newspaper articles flooded over the United
States like a tidal wave. One can hardly pick up a magazine on a newsstand that
does not feature at least one article on sex. The medical doctors, the
gynecologists, the psycho-analysts, the "sexologists," ground out
"authoritative" books conveying information and teaching on the
subject of sex. Yet in all this dissemination the MOST ESSENTIAL DIMENSION OF
KNOWLEDGE WAS MISSING! It has remained for this present volume to reveal that
all-important dimension, its real meaning and purposes. This missing dimension
in knowledge has not been revealed by religion, by the medical fraternity, by
the "authorities" on the subject nor by higher education. You will
find it only in this book. Do NOT GLANCE OVER and past that portion of this
book. It is a million times more valuable than the technical-physical knowledge.
The latter, without the former can be, ultimately, disastrously fatal! For this
is, in true fact, the most important and necessary book ever published on sex!
Today we live in a different world. Sex is everywhere discussed, and almost as
promiscuously indulged. But the new "freedom" is by no means limited
to the sexual response! The modern plunge has dived much deeper than even a
modern society is aware! First, take a swift overview of "progress"
after a year in the eighties! Then a surprised (to those of thirty and below)
glance back into the pre-World War years as it had been for some 4,000 years!
Our camera zooms now into the Western world before and after -- two divergent
human societies! The contrast ought to arouse the reader to sober thought! --
but will it? Or have we become too lukewarm to be concerned? Our own future and
eternity hangs in the balance! Today's condition and trend is so frightening in
what it portends, it ought to shock every individual out of complacency into
desperate action to reverse the ominous tide! But the FACTS OF LIFE as we speed
through the eighties have not hit us SUDDENLY in a twenty-four-hour day or a
single week! The deadly contrast is not so apparent -- because it came on us
gradually over a period of six decades -- two full generations. The "New
Morality" world was spawned after the turn of the century. It developed
from the embryo stage during World War I. It surged, mostly among teens
unnoticed by their parents on past World War II. The emergence of television
after that war gave the trend great impetus. Acceleration sped the downward
plunge. The "New Morality" really surfaced during the sixties,
blossomed into full bloom in the seventies. Where are we NOW -- after a year
into the eighties? In the United States ONE MILLION TEENAGE GIRLS, UNMARRIED,
GET PREGNANT EVERY YEAR! Conditions in England, Sweden and Western Europe rival
this. Two Johns Hopkins University professors, Melvin Zelnik and John F. Kantner,
in a very recent study, report that 50 percent of the nation's teenage girls --
age 14 to 19 -- have had premarital sex. The survey showed the percentage has
significantly increased since 1971! Today, with the avalanche of sex literature
and sex education published since World War I and with sex everywhere freely
discussed, the teens are indeed "wise" in sexual discussion and sexual
experience, but still woefully IGNORANT in sex knowledge. Syracuse University
Professor Sol Gordon says fewer than 10 percent of all teenagers have been given
any school sex education. And of course they receive little or none from their
parents. The gutter-knowledge acquired from their peers is woefully inadequate.
Yet they are "wise in their own conceits." Like the boy whose father
in agitated embarrassment said, "Johnnie, I think it's time we had a talk
about sex." "Fine, Dad," came the answer. "What'd you like
to know?" Sex ignorance is testified by the fact of 250,000 reported
adolescent gonorrhea cases annually. Not long ago a third of marriages in the
United States resulted in divorce. Today the divorce rate has swelled to one
half of all marriages! The foundational bulwark of any healthy, stable and
permanent society is the FAMILY UNIT. Before World War I it was a rare married
woman who worked away from home. I remember, during World War I, my own surprise
at seeing women employed for the first time as elevator operators in the
Marshall Field store in Chicago! Such jobs never had been for women! Today only
13 percent of U.S. families include a working father, home-making mother and one
or more children! What would an Abraham Lincoln think of that! Or even a
Theodore Roosevelt! Or a Woodrow Wilson! Would they not turn over in their
graves -- if they knew? Over two-and-one-half million American men and women
avoid marriage altogether -- yet live together, either as unmarried
heterosexuals or as homosexuals. By 1990 a virgin standing at the marriage altar
will be a phenomenon. Many ask today, why marriage at all, anyway? Some
"experts" say marriage will soon be a thing of the past. There is
today a definite conspiracy, active on television, in newspapers and in
universities, to do away with the institution of marriage. Though most people in
the eighties will marry at least once, there will be a broad variety of options.
This will include living alone by choice -- though by no means will it preclude
sex. It will include single parentage by women, unmarried twosomes -- both
homosexual and heterosexual. It will include communal living and unrelated
families. The number of unmarried couples living together doubled in the
seventies! Today "authorities" say "change in partnership may be
seen as predictable, understandable, even desirable. We'll back away from the
notion of lifelong marriage." Loosening attitudes toward sex, shout the
"expert" conspirators, will help propel these changes. With legalized
abortion, and improved contraception, coming on the eighties horizon are an
anti-pregnancy vaccine, birth control implants under the skin, and a birth
control pill for men! Sex will be equated with fun, pleasure, enjoyment -- not
babies! Since it is a basic truism that a solid family structure is the
foundational bulwark of any stable and permanent society, this fact means only
one thing -- CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT IS ON THE WAY DOWN -- AND OUT -- unless
that great "Unseen Strong Hand from Someplace" soon intervenes and
saves today's sick society. But before we leave the world scene of the eighties,
bear in mind the present WORLD IN REVOLT is in rebellion against much more than
pre-20th century sex repression. And the modern downward spiral of humanity
involves a much wider area than sex alone. Today the family structure of Western
life is endangered by much more than illicit and promiscuous sex. Along with the
modern sex rampage of adolescents has come other addictions that titillate,
arouse, stimulate and please the physical senses. Accompanying sexual indulgence
has come, in teen life, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, modern X-rated movies,
gangsterism, violence. They look for every pleasing, stimulating sensation. Some
appeal to the sense of feel. Some to sight. Some to hearing -- like rock and
disco music with the sensual beat and the rhythm. Some to the sense of smell.
People smell tobacco smoke. Cigarette ads speak only of "taste." But
you cannot taste smoke! Believe it or not, you cannot taste smoke! But as the
smell of tobacco smoke becomes addictive in the nostril, and affects body and
mind in the lungs, so "pot" (marijuana), opium and other smoke affects
the MIND, and stimulates. One gets "high" -- experiences new
sensations. Heroin and other hard drugs even more so. Nearly all who become
hooked on the hard drugs started on marijuana. The movies bring
"pleasures" through the sense of sight and of sound. Kids spend hours
a day before the "one-eyed monster." It provides a ready-made
daydream. And misuse not only dulls the mind, television has been a prime medium
by which the anti-family conspiracy has injected its deadly poison into juvenile
and adult minds. Make no mistake. Television is an industry devoted to
ENTERTAINMENT -- pure and simple! Of course one finds occasionally on TV a truly
educational and/or worthwhile program or documentary. But TV is a BUSINESS for
PROFIT in America. It provides ENTERTAINMENT so that people have
"commercials" selling goods and services thrust before them. The
entertainers -- even news announcers who are themselves primarily entertainers
-- say before a "commercial break," "Stay tuned," or
"We'll be right back -- don't go away." The viewer is literally forced
to allow the commercial huckster to inject his sales pitch into the mind.
Another modern evil -- seldom recognized as such -- is the working wife and
mother. Family life has undergone a RADICAL REVOLUTION! Teens have sex games at
home in bed while Dad and Mom are at work. Children do not eat with parents.
They seldom go to movies with parents. Parents have their lives, associates and
friends apart from the children. Parents never think of teaching children, being
with children, maintaining a FAMILY RELATIONSHIP! Parental responsibility is
totally neglected. In due time parents are going to be brought to account for
this neglect of basic responsibility.
But Now, What a Surprise for the Under-Thirties!
The young people of today have little awareness of the sex and family
conditions in pre-war years. In fact, until 1914 there had been little basic
change for some 4,000 years! The prior to 1914 years were as different from
today's world as day is from night! Parents then, even as now, taught their
children nothing about sex. They themselves knew nothing! Their parents never
had taught them! Besides, it would have been too embarrassing! The commonly
accepted dictum was, "Keep our children innocent through ignorance until
marriage -- then instinct will teach them." But instinct did not teach
them. Humans, unlike animals, do not come equipped with instinct. Blindly, with
a smattering of gutter-acquired misknowledge, the newly married blundered their
way into disillusionments, shattered dreams, bitter resentments and frustrations
-- and, too often the divorce courts, although divorces were still a rarity.
True, a very large percentage of girls were kept "pure." The girl, up
until 1914, who lost her virginity unmarried had also "lost her
honor." Of course a double standard had developed. Every man wanted a
virgin for a wife, but a majority were less careful about male virtue. Yet the
girl who had "gone the limit" was "damaged goods." Those
under thirty today know little about prevailing attitudes and sexual behavior
prior to the two world wars. Contrariwise, if a girl who died at age 22 prior to
1917 were resurrected suddenly back to life today, she would be appalled! --
horrified! -- at the prevailing attitude and behavior of 22-year-old girls
today! Just what are the generally unrealized FACTS? What was the real origin of
the then traditional Christian morality? And conversely, what triggered the
moral revolution -- the so-called "New Morality"? How did TODAY'S
moderns come to accept present attitudes and behavior patterns? What has
finally, after thousands of years of the "sex-is-shameful" repression,
plunged the world into prevalent sexual "freedoms"? And what, after
all, is the PLAIN TRUTH? What, after all, are the TRUE VALUES? Was the pre-World
War concept better for humanity? Is the present "New Morality" really
advancement -- really better for those who are swept along with it? People who
lived prior to the 20th century would be aghast if they could see life as it is
lived today. Up until World War I people believed in marriage and family life.
My own family was typical. I had never known of a divorce or a broken home and
family in any of my relatives or ancestors. Marriage was "until death do us
part." Any other status or life-style would have been strange and shocking.
But what brought this drastic change?
CHAPTER 1
World in Revolt -- Why This Book Had to Be Written
WHY WORLD ACCEPTANCE OF "the New Morality"? What, until
1914, had been the Western world's standard of morality? Was it good or
bad? Has a whole world in revolt brought anything better? What have been
the FACTS? What have been the CAUSES? It is not only a moral revolution.
A revolution in government, in economics, in science and technology, in
education, in labor standards and in social values, even in religion,
has shaken the whole world! WHY? WHY has the whole world suddenly
aroused to violent action? And especially in the area of morals? We will
give specific causes a little later. The "authorities" -- the
psychoanalysts and the medical doctors -- decided moral standards were
in need of revision. And they have been revised, radically, under the
catch-phrase "the New Morality"! Yet few realize the facts of
the true origin of the "sex-is-shameful" attitude, or of the
impetus behind the moral revolution. The facts are stranger than
fiction!
The Most Vital Dimension MISSING
The world, since the first World War, as mentioned above, has been
deluged with books, pamphlets and articles in magazines and newspapers
about sex. Still, the most necessary dimension in knowledge of the
subject has been missing -- unpublished until this book! Today protest
fills the air. Revolt is everywhere, against almost everything! And in
no grievance is revolt so widespread as that against the repressive
moral codes of traditional Christianity. The revolters reject the
authority of the church. They have embraced what they term "the New
Morality." Just what are the generally unknown FACTS? What was the
real origin of the traditional Christian morality? Did it come from
Christ -- from the original apostles -- from the Bible? And what
triggered the moral revolution, and finally plunged the world into the
sexual "freedoms" of today?
Origin of the "Old" Morality
Christianity, following its first generation, absorbed the pagan
dualism of Greece, and pasted the label "sinful" on sex.
Through the centuries since, the moral standards of the Western world
were regulated by the Roman Catholic Church. Does that mean, then, that
Christ introduced and taught this attitude that sex of itself is
shameful and evil? Emphatically it does not! Jesus never represented sex
as anything other than that which our Maker created, and all that He had
created God pronounced "very good." Jesus taught against wrong
uses of sex. He forgave a repentant woman caught in the act of adultery,
with the admonition, "Go, and sin no more." The original
apostles never deviated from this teaching. The biblical teaching
throughout is the same. What, then, was the real source of this attitude
of shame? It flowed on the tide of the Babylonian Mystery religion into
the Roman world. And how did this concept come to be accepted as
Christian? The facts, I repeat, are stranger than fiction. Emphatically
it was not the teaching of Hebraism, nor of Jesus, nor of the original
Church of God. It reached the Roman world by way of Greece, but it
flowed, at an earlier date, into Greece from Egypt. Yet it stems from a
still earlier source, to be revealed in the following chapter. In the
first and second centuries the Roman world was dotted by pagan schools,
on the curricular model established by the Grecian Plato. Plato had
received this dualistic attitude toward sex from his teacher, the
philosopher Socrates, himself a sex pervert. This dualistic teaching had
become the basic hypothesis of all Grecian thought, writing and
religion. Sex was regarded as low and degrading, an act in which man
descended to the level of the beast. This was the underlying attitude in
the teaching of the pagan schools throughout the Roman Empire. There
were no Christian schools. To establish such schools would have been
impossible. Textbooks had to be written laboriously, by hand, one at a
time. The printing press was not to be invented for centuries. All
textbooks were pagan. Second- and third-generation Christians were
reared and educated from childhood in these pagan schools. By the
beginning of the 6th century this dualistic concept toward sex was
firmly rooted in western Christianity. It is still the teaching of the
Roman Catholic Church. Protestants in general have passively followed
Catholic teaching on sex, but have tended to be more lax in behavior.
The Fruits of Prudery
But what were the real fruits of that dualistic concept of virtue?
Some 90 percent of marriages were rendered unhappy -- many utterly
miserable and unbearable -- because of false attitudes and sex
ignorance. Many a wife was virtually raped on her wedding night. The
stupid husband didn't mean to injure his wife. He was just plain
IGNORANT! He needed instruction that had been denied him. Many wives
called their husbands "BRUTES." They simply were ignorant of
the fact that brutes, guided by instinct, are not guilty of such things.
Husbands said their wives were "frigid" and too often began to
visit prostitutes. What price IGNORANCE! Then came World War I. It
brought tremendous changes in thinking, in behavior patterns, in social
customs and in the double standard. Women won the vote in America. Wives
began entering employment and becoming financially independent.
The Freudian Conclusion
Previously, about 1904, a startling conclusion had been reached by
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis. This revolutionary opinion had
resulted from his clinical experience and researches. Freud had decided
that sexual repression, the attitude of shame, and ignorances about sex
were the CAUSES of neuroses and many mental disorders. He and his
followers in the newly appearing profession of psychiatry urged
knowledge dissemination and sexual freedom as the panacea. If repression
and self-denial caused the neurotic disquiet, why not reverse the
interpretation of morality? Emancipate the people from restraints. Put a
new definition on sex. Define it as GOOD, not degrading, shameful and
EVIL -- any use of sex, in or out of marriage. In the wake of World War
I the agitation resulting from Freud's revolutionary conclusions finally
brought about the toppling of the legal barriers. And the moral barriers
began breaking down simultaneously. With the removal of legal restraints
against sex instruction, medical doctors and psychoanalysts began
grinding out volume after volume imparting heretofore banned instruction
about sex. Previously, the publication of knowledge in other fields had
been accelerating. But in the delicate area of knowledge about sex the
medical and associated professions had held a monopoly. Now sex
information was hurled at the public from all directions. Even today
almost every magazine one might pick up off a newsstand will contain at
least one article on the subject of sex, as noted earlier. Even the most
conservative magazines. Besides there are magazines devoted wholly to
sex and I do not mean pornographic magazines.
The "New Morality" Appears
Yet something has been criminally wrong with this avalanche of sex
literature. There has been missing the most vital dimension. The world
began throwing off the restraints. The revolt was on, against prudery,
repression and ignorance. The new sensual knowledge -- with its
most-needed dimension missing -- quickly began to be gulped in by
curiosity-hungry minds. World War II shot morals into the gutter. And
now they have plunged all the way into the cesspool. Permissiveness is
the current fad. Today, it is actually becoming popular in more and more
colleges and universities to allow students to visit the dorm rooms of
those of opposite sex at any or all hours around the clock -- and sleep
with them if desired. Many have introduced the system of "co-ed
dorms" -- both men's rooms and girls' in opposite wings on the same
floor, no restrictions whatsoever. Today pornography is rampant on many
school and college grounds, and smut has become a multimillion-dollar
industry in country after country. Today we have "progressed"
completely past "topless" bars and restaurants. When they
became no longer shocking, "bottomless" followed, and finally,
the supreme jolt as a shocker -- and in several places -- to entertain a
lust-gripped audience, actual live sexual intercourse performed in the
nude on stage. Not simulated. "For REAL!" Along with this
trend had come the hippies, "rock-festival" orgies attended by
thousands, fast-growing drug addiction, hundreds of thousands literally
"blowing their minds!" I mentioned, above, that the revolters
have rejected the authority of the church. But where is the authority
for a right moral code?
Do Humans Really Know Right from Wrong?
After all, what is right? -- and what is wrong? What is really best
for each individual? It is generally assumed that every sane person
"knows the difference between right and wrong." But DO THEY?
Many Roman Catholics still think any use of sex outside of marriage is
sin -- and therefore wrong. Perhaps a few non-Catholics still believe
the same thing. On the other hand, millions now believe in the "New
Morality." They believe in complete sexual freedom. They believe
denial and repression is wrong. And even a very large segment of
Catholics are relaxing their attitudes! There are other views in
between. What is the truth? The TRUTH is that the most tragically needed
dimension in sex knowledge has been MISSING!
Now Even Marriage Being Questioned
In the modern rebellion against just about everything -- including
puritanical taboos -- the world is tending to reject any and all
authority, and is turning more and more to impulse and unbridled desire.
Now some psychiatrists are questioning the institution of marriage! Who
started the marriage custom, anyway? And WHEN? If man is merely the
highest evolvement of the animal kingdom, WHEN, in the evolutionary
development from lower animal into man, did marriage with home and
family life start -- and WHY? Animals do not marry. They have no
"home life." Yet all animals reproduce. Marriage is not
necessary for reproduction. Do we really need any AUTHORITY for what is
right or wrong about sex -- about marriage? Is sexual freedom by mutual
consent really harmful to anybody? Is the game, becoming prevalent, of
husband-and-wife-swapping wrong -- is it harming the participants -- or
is it beneficial? Let's see what MODERN SCIENCE -- and the SCIENTIFIC
METHOD has contributed. Vital NEW KNOWLEDGE awaits the reader.
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CHAPTER 2